a religious experience?

...no no not really but something weird happened to me today in the mountains

I was descending a trail here in les arcs called 'grange hill'. it starts at 2000m and finishes at 800. the top section is fire road and then you cut off it down a couple of precipitous grassy mountain slopes. they're too steep to go down directly, so you follow a narrow ridge and then cut back in so they are rideable.

I took one look at the first pitch and immediately decided i wasn't going to do it and go around on the fire road, which is weird for me as it was well within my capabilities.

I was giving myself a hard time about it as I slowly rolled down the fire road...and then my brakes failed. the pads on my rear brake had worn through and so i had no decent stopping power or direction control. Had I decided to go down the slope the other way I would have been seriously injured...literally trapped on a mountainside with no brakes!!

Yes of course it was a co-incidence and all that but its made me go all mysterious in a 'there's someone looking after me today' kind of way...